Why so many anti-vaxxing mums

[FirstTimeMum881]

I have a 5 month old baby and I'm going back to work at 7.5 months and planning on pumping milk at work. I was looking for tips so I joined some Facebook groups on breastfeeding and pumping and also made an account on babycenter as it had a lot of threads on the subject. OH MY GOD. They may as well rename these groups "Batshit mums against vaccines" because the content is insane. My favourite is a mum of a preemie refusing donor milk from vaccinated mothers. Lots of others paranoid their babies have autism because they had their 8 week jabs and they noticed their babies love staring at the ceiling.

I'm aware most of these women are in the US but what the hell is going on??? It's like i stepped into a parallel universe.

Don't forget that the current US Health Secretary is a vaccine sceptic. It's a much more widely taken position there than here.

See also - social media algorithms feeding Mums all sorts of parenting 'advice' from completely unqualified 'momfluencers' and the echo chambers that this creates.

Because they haven´t seen 3 out of their 5 kids die of kid´s infectious diseases like my great grandmother did. Burying your kids from perfectly preventable diseases should cure this malaise.

In the kindest words possible because they are missing brain cells. They aren't the brightest crayons in the box. Maybe they would like to see their children in a iron lung?
Who knows. Best to just avoid people like that.

Echoing what @Katiesaidthat said. They don’t remember the diseases. My sister had whooping cough I can still hear the noises she made when she was struggling to breathe.

They're absolutely fucking batshit.

Lack of experience of the horrors of a 'natural' childhood mortality rate.

Too much exposure to the echo-chamber of social media filled with conspiracy theories and 'wellness' bullshit

It's not new. My kids were babies/toddlers during the MMR vaccine scare. In SW London where I live MMR take-up went down to about 70%.

One mum told me that if her baby caught measles she would treat it with homeopathy.

Failure of the American education system.

social media algorithms feeding Mums all sorts of parenting 'advice' from completely unqualified 'momfluencers' and the echo chambers that this creates

Exactly. They flock to Facebook groups where they find like-minded people and are unlikely to get a lot of serious pushback. In real life they are the outliers but online they find a safe haven for spreading anti-science hysteria.

The same is true for many social media illness/disease "support groups". Chock full of " doctors are wrong/don't know anything" and advice to seek help from some loon on YouTube.

This was rife in 2000 when I was a first time mum. Our GP seemed surprised when I said there was no need for him to go through why MMR was safe.

Unfortunately the disgrace of Andrew Wakefield hasn’t stopped this idiocy. Probably the only thing that will stop it is truly horrific - a bad bout of measles which kills. And no one wants that.

OP its not just the US you find this but in the UK too! I took my DS for his first jabs and a women came over and was talking to me she asked if I was there for his first jabs I replied yes. She instantly started telling me I shouldn't do it because it could give him autism! Now given the fact my DD has autism and ADHD and another with other issues and the fact my husband and I are both being assessed for the same ND conditions it did make me chuckle as the chances are pretty high regardless. I thanked her for her info but stated I would still be getting my son vaccinated. She wasn't amused however I couldn't care less my baby my choice 😂 x

The nurse was VERY resistant to giving me my whooping cough vaccine until after my 20 week scan (I’d been sent for it by midwives) because of there had been any abnormalities on the scan I might blame the vaccine! Honestly, some people done deserve the luck and health their children may well have despite their parents utter stupidity.

All this misinformation is messing with people's actual facts from fiction. But can someone tell me please how do you tell a family member about a diagnosis like Autism when they are a fully paid up member of the conspiracy theories?

I nearly died from measles as a child. I also remember the huge amount of people who were middle aged and older who had serious physical disabilities because of polio. My teacher had a leg brace and a hunch back as he had it as a child.

There was a huge mumps outbreak in the campus I worked on about 13 years ago because so many didn’t want to give their kids the MMR vaccine. The study was tiny of the children who had been diagnosed with autism post MMR. It’s been discredited now but remains as some sort of myth that the hard of thinking cling on to.

Because they are allowed to be. In some countries no vaccine = no school or nursery and no school = an offense

@Carebearstartrek if you love your relative you inwardly roll your eyes. If you do not like them it’s a perfect opportunity to fall out with them by calling them thick and never having to put up with them again.

They dont know the horror of childhood illnesses, they are so privileged thanks to the earlier generations who took the vaccines.

I recently read of a town nearby where in early 1800s a doctor had acquired the smallpox vaccine and held a 1 day clinic to vaccinate all the children in the village. On the appointed day a local herbal 'witch doctor' type arrived and tried to block it and told everyone of how damaging it was etc. Only 2 mothers were strong enough to insist. The entire child population of the village was wiped out shortly after including the children of the herb 'doctor'. I cannot for even one second imagine living through that, the empty schools and silence in the neighbourhood and all those poor little buried children. I know the story isn't uncommon but it shocks me everytime I think of it.

Thank you that made me laugh, and yes it's the right thing to do. Just hard sometimes 😞

I live in an American expat community and I've found that American mums are a lot more likely to be anti-vaxxers or at least sceptical of vaccines. Not all of them or even most but definitely more than in the UK.

This generation and later haven't experienced the times where too many babies and children died of measles and other common illnesses. They didn't experience watching 1 or more of their children die. They didn't experience the relief when vaccines started to become available to everyone. If nowadays generation had experienced this, there would far less anti vaxxers.

The anti vax parent‘s kid gets sick from a vaccine preventable illness. The parent will be busy 24/7 looking after their sick child. Hopefully the child will recover without complications. The parent will be exhausted. All vaccines will then be done asap

Obviously anecdotal, but a lot of my friends NCT groups had anti-vaxxers, IM not sure what the coloration was there. Its horrifying though some of the things you see these people claim online.

I have measles related hearing loss (and basic common sense) so I shut it down pretty quite quickly

I know the anti-vax sentiment is on the rise but I really haven't encountered in real life. It's a shame as I really just wanted some support around breastfeeding and pumping and there is a lot of that in those groups. But trailing through the anti-vax posts gives me the absolute rage.

I think a big contributing factor is how some social media algorithms work nowadays - I know TikTok tends to just show you more of the same/more of what you watch most of, so if you show a bit of interest it becomes an echo chamber very rapidly. Some particular groups on Facebook can be the same, I'm in a home birth one and it can be really unpleasant towards people who share pro-vaccine views or who challenge the expertise and evidence of those strongly against vaccines.

Because they're as thick as two short planks, to put it succinctly.